Pre Paid Revolution in Poland "PLAY Fresh"
 

New sim cards
http://www.gsmonline.pl/portal/image...startery_s.jpg

1 minute to everybody 0.29PLN = +-6 EUROCENTS per minute :) [1EURO=4.70PLN]
topup 5PLN extend valid outgoing calls for 365days :)

You beat me to it! There's an article here (in Polish of course): Play Fresh - rewolucyjna obni?ka cen

No word on data or international rates, though, and presumably it's limited to Play network coverage (no roaming on Plus).

There's official pricelist: http://web.playmobile.pl/resources/p...Play_Fresh.pdf
Prices are the same in Play own coverage and in Plus roaming.

International rates like in old Play Karta - to EU 2,00 PLN/min. Nothing special.
Data - 0,12 PLN/100kB, there's also packet 5MB for 5 PLN - it's 1,20 PLN/MB normally, 1,00 PLN/MB in packet (instead of 5 PLN/MB on old tariff)

Another good thing are free SMS to all Polish networks, which you get by topup.
Topup amount/SMS amount/SMS vailidity
5 PLN/500 SMS/5 days
10 PLN/1000 SMS/10 days
30 PLN/3000 SMS/30 days
50 PLN or more/5000 SMS/50 days

There's also packet of minutes - 5 PLN for 100 minutes to Play and landline (0,05 PLN/min). Valid for 30 days.

And there's 90 days more to receive :-).
And voicemail is still free (with e-mail forwarding)
And...

OK, it's dirty cheap to keep the number "alive", it's very cheap to make national calls, but you know all those fine prints in other operator's tariff "excluding Play/P4", "to Play - higher rate" etc. Play is allowed to have the termination rate twice as higher as the "Big Three" and it may really more expensive to call Play then other +48 mobile network :-P

What are the rates like to call overseas (e.g. North America) with it?

My termination rates to Play seem reasonable... of course they may not stay reasonable.

Very high. 2 PLN/min (about 53 US cents) to Europe, USA and Canada, 4 PLN elsewhere. Debiting 30/30.

The cheapest mobile rate from over the puddle is (via a dialthru number) in Telepin mobi (MVNO on Orange) 0.35 PLN/min (about 9 US cents). Debiting is 60/60. Mobi - Special Offers 1
(The pdf pricelist under the link is not up-to-date)

The best rate to USA/Canada with direct dialing is from Cyfrowy Polsat: 1 PLN/min with 1/1 debiting.

Do you mean rates of some Canadian operator? What are they, and are they higher then for the rest of Polish mobile numbers?

2 PLN is not horrid, if the longevity of the prepaid balance is good. Thanks for the additional information though.

The termination rates I checked were from voip.ms, which is a Canadian VoIP provider with presences in the US, Canada and the UK. My termination rate to Polish mobiles seems to be roughly 8 or 12 cents US per minute, depending on the carrier.

Wow, it's probably the cheapest offer in all Europe, even better than the Finnish ones... compliments to Play! :)

Here is video link to press conference (in english and polish)
PLAY FRESH na kart? - konferencja prasowa bez tricków on Vimeo

What do you mean by "the cheapest"? The cheapest national rate or the cheapest cost of keeping the sim "alive"?

Some scans of new Pre Paid PLAY FRESH Box:
http://images45.fotosik.pl/79/6714bd4308c48622med.jpg
http://images49.fotosik.pl/79/cd2365b9cae57bc7.jpg
http://images48.fotosik.pl/79/6f18ab5dd2a885bamed.jpg
http://images39.fotosik.pl/75/a6a605c0acac8ac6med.jpg

The levels of these rates tell me it's very likely that the FCT/GSM gateway (GSM gateway - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) termination is in use. Using such devices is forbidden by T&C's of SIM usage and operators try to disable all the SIMs working in gateways. But, even if there were no GSM gateways for +48 termination, those rates don't have to increase very much even with "standard" termination, however, excluding Play. Why? Whereas the Polish Big Three (Orange, Plus, Era) has recently been forced by the regulator to decrease their termination rates to 0.21 PLN in January and 0.16 in July, Play still is allowed to keep the level of about 0.55 PLN (in order to collect funds for building its own infrastructure).

But you shouldn't worry about the high Play->Canada/USA rate anyway. In Play Fresh, it's possible to buy 30-day packets of 100 minutes to Play and landlines for 5 PLN (at most 3 packets at the same time) and use them together with a local calling card. I think that Telepin card would be OK. It has English voice prompts and the rate via the landline access number to Canada and USA (except Alaska) is 0.18 PLN/min.

Oferta indywidualna operator of prepaid Simplus in poland
start new prepaid war in poland. simplus will have almost this same offer 0.29PLN per minute = 0.06 EUROCENT
Przet?umaczona wersja strony http://www.gsmonline.pl/portal/news/news.jsp?s0n_id=22034

FWIW, I already have a Play Fresh SIM - I found a naughty kiosk that was already selling the starter packs. They cost 5 zloty.

Price war continues :-)
 

Heyah in the Multipacket tariff decreases the rate in the "Cheaper to all" option (national calls except to Play) from 0.45 PLN to 0.25 PLN/min :-).

Wow, it seems hard to keep the Polish pages updated now! :p

Plus and Era have already replied to Fresh

We're waiting for Orange. Its spokesman has told recently in his blog that "Orange will surely reply to the competitors' offers but the choice of a strategy is difficult".

Oui, oui, c'est vraiment difficile :-P

Hmmm, having had Play Fresh for a little while, it seems to be slightly unreliable. At the moment, I lent the SIM to a visitor, and I'm regretting not getting another Heyah SIM instead. The Fresh SIM only seems to work on 3G - it would not connect to Plus. And in a UMTS phone with good reception, it refuses to connect to my Heyah number. I get a "nie ma takiego numeru" message, but my Heyah number receives a "this number tried to reach you" SMS. It also seems possible that the initial credit only lasts 30 days, not 365.

Play Fresh WORKS on Plus' roaming. If it's not, just try to log manually on Plus. Initial credit depends on start pack: 5zl - 10 days, 9zl - 20 days, 30zl - 30 days.

Yes, that's what it was. (sigh) It seems a bit silly to me to advertise the 365-day validity of the card but then revert to the bad old Polish habit of making it expire after 10 days anyway. It's not like 5 zloty is going to last long. Oh well, back to Heyah.